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You
see her posing on the motorcycle on the front page of Alpha Productions and she's
a model all the way. That was the time I first met her, at Exotic Dancer's annual
Gentlemen's clubs owner's expo in Las Vegas during the late summer of 2001.
She was at the Pure Talent Agency's booth and her pictures had just been put
in the Playboy Magazine of Lingerie. Then I took her over to Alpha Pro's exhibitor's
booth and had her pose before my camera with a Connecticut club owner friend
of mine. She was terrific and very beautiful. And I never saw her again after
the second day of the Expo.
Until
months later at a motel all the Pure Talent features were staying at in Mobile,
Alabama. I was standing by the front desk about to head to the Candy Store a
few minutes later where I was to start shooting the Pure Talent features with
my Canon G-2 digital camera. She came into the lobby with a suitcase in her
hand and said "Hey, I know you."
"How
can I ever forget you?" I replied. "How can I after you took that
terrific picture on that motorcyle at the Pure Talent booth?"
During
the next four nights she would become my pal. We would always talk in the dressing
room and I remember our first conversation there while she was filling out her
DJ sheet.
"What
should I put down for special strobe lighting effects and the smoke machine?"
she asked.
"Put
down whatever you want. The effects are nice but you aren't going to take very
good pictures through all that smoke and strobe lighting."
"Then
I'll write down no. I won't use them," she said.
Some
of the features seem unaware of the guys taking their pictures because they
are so busy doing their acts and you really can't blame them. This was a feature
talent event and club owners were in the crowd trying to decide what features
they are going to book. They are out to impress the club owners. A single club
owner might book a feature for a multi week tour of several of his clubs since
many of the clubs here are chains.
Lana
Christine impressed everybody there at the club, especially me. The DJ who was
damn good was impressed. The bouncer and one of the managers later on came to
the Lost Angels chat online hoping to get in touch with her. Then there was
Larry.
That
first night was the Meet and Greet, an informal event attended by the features
who simply mingled with the crowd. Their stage events were to begin the next
night and were to continue for three nights straight. After spending several
hours in the club I followed a couple features outside. We were all heading
back to the motel. I heard a voice calling out to me--"Hey, I like that
hat you are wearing. Can I buy it from you?" The voice came from a guy
who was about to get into his pickup truck. I had my Dodge four wheeler parked
close to his so we looked at each other's pickup trucks. He had a twenty-two
rifle lying across his seat with a scope on it which is something I'd probably
do.
That
was Larry. He was a Southerner from Mobile. We then started talking about women
and somehow got on the subject of women who were beautiful both on the inside
and the outside.
"I
paint as a hobby," Larry told me. "I'll tell you what. I'll pick a
dancer and you pick a dancer. Both of us will pick a girl we think is truly
beautiful, both inside and out. And then we will choose between the two and
I'll do a painting of the girl we decide upon."
"A
girl whose very soul shines from her eyes," I replied. "The kind of
girl who is transcendental, not just someone who is put together right and who
has nice hair and a pretty face. Someone who will still be beautiful when she's
sixty."
The
next night Larry was in the club leading a pretty blonde house dancer by the
hand up to me. He introduced her and then she grinned and said: "Larry
has told me all about you and how you are taking pictures for Pure Talent. I
sure hope you find the time to take a few of me."
That
night she hung around me a lot, sitting next to me as I worked on my pictures
on my laptop just in front of the stage. She was warm and friendly. We lined
up a photo shoot in my motel room the next day.
The
girl brought her boyfriend along who was the club's alternate DJ. I had a black
photography portable background in my room. But the bed had these horrendous
bed covers on it. You could have the most beautiful girl in that room and there
would be no way you could get great pictures of her. So the three of us headed
back to the club and took a lot more pictures there. Much better ones.
Larry
came in again that night and this time I introduced him to Lana Christine. "My
God. She is really something," he said. The girl I know is cute but she's
nothing like Lana. I want to do the painting of Lana."
I
don't know how I can convey through simple words what Lana was like those four
days and nights I was around her. On the stage her eyes took in where I was
with my camera and somehow she was able to concentrate on her performances and
upon the customers admiring her and still know where I was and when I was about
to shoot a picture of her. Often she would hesitate in front of the camera for
a second or two and when the flash went off she would continue her act. If you
could only see all of her pictures. Most of the time her eyes are looking directly
at the lens--a models eyes, eating up whatever they see.
The
house dancer I had taken pictures of used every excuse she could think of to
show up in the feature's dressing room. She loved Lana, singling her out whenever
she could.
There's
another thing about Lana. She's not a dancer. Believe me she can dance but here's
a little on her background which explains why she's not a dancer. She danced
for a year or two in her late teens and then had nothing to do with the profession
for ten years. She worked doing Accounting work in an Accounting office for
those ten years, doing a regular job, getting up early in the morning the way
most normal people do. Then she started modeling on the side and it was about
that time that I met her at the Pure Talent booth in Las Vegas. I don't think
she had done a single gig as a feature when I met her. So she was new to the
feature scene--a complete unknown.
I
was going to do an interview of her roommate, Sabrina Scott, for "Xtreme
Magazine" and do some special pictures of her. So I'd go up to Sabrina
and Lana's room looking for Sabrina. I'd find Lana in the room alone, with her
everyday clothes on and her high heels off. No makeup on her face. She seemed
much shorter in the room with her heels off and although she looked nice without
her makeup on she just didn't seem to be the showgirl type. I noticed something
about her face. It was a face that showed not just intelligence but wisdom and
a contentment about herself that one very seldom finds in this profession. It
was a face like you might find on your neighbors wife, a neighbor who is your
friend and who you often had coffee with and if he was not there, his wife would
make you a pot of coffee and the two of you would just sit there sipping it
while waiting for your friend to come in.
Which
brings us back to the question--is Lana Christine an entertainer or a model.
She's neither. But just happens to be good at both which was probably never
her major goal in life and probably still isn't.
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